Could DD have Aspergers/ASD when she has such a vivid imagination?

[NonAstemia]

DD is 9 and does have lots of Aspergers/ASD traits. The reason I always thought that she probably isn't on the spectrum is that she has a very vivid imagination. She makes up long and convoluted stories (she's currently on page sixtysomething of the novel she's writing ) and plays for hours with her model animals. She's got a couple of friends that she plays with and they play imaginative games, however DD is the one that drives this; she dictates the plot, assigns everyone else their roles and has to really be pushed to compromise and let anyone change the game slightly. She won't play with her animals with anyone else; she puts them away when people come round. She loves me to play with them (I only do this occasionally now she's older) but again she dictates exactly what she wants you to do; she's extremely prescriptive.

My question is, for those of you who have DCs on the spectrum, do any of your children engage in imaginative play and storytelling? I'd read that one of the primary characteristics of someone with ASD is their inability to use 'social imagination'. Is that the same as imaginative play or is that something different?

Forgive my ignorance please!

Dd1 has Aspergers and has a good imagination, will write stories and enjoys writing scripts for plays.

Dd2 has HFA and has just started to use her imagination (she's 6) but most of it is based around things she hasseen on TV rather than characters she has made up herself so not quite sure if it is imaginitive play or not.

Most children on the spectrum will not fit all the typical ASD traits, a lot will have imagination, others wont have any, so it is possable she is on the spectrum.

Dd3(9) has ASD and is high functioning she doesnt really have an imagination as such but she does play really well with her playmobil, her play is based around daily life, life experiences and like marnes Dd tv . Anyone who doesnt really know her well could easily think that she was playing imaginatively though.

Like your Dd she doesnt like other children to play with her playmobil and she gets really cross if anyone moves something.

She is very controlling and likes to be in charge of friendships which doesn't always go well.

Do your Dd's difficulties impact on her daily life? If they do then it could be worth asking your Gp about getting her assessed .

Good luck

Thank you for your replies. Marne it sounds like the two things are not mutually exclusive then.

Ineed do DD's difficulties impact on her daily life?... yes they do. She lacks social awareness and has always had problems interacting well with other children. She's good at initiating social contact because she's confident and articulate, but she has a lot more trouble sustaining it. She doesn't read signals at all well and she can be very inflexible and bossy with other children. She often doesn't notice (or if she does she doesn't care) if the other child is bored or getting frustrated or cross with her. She's quite boisterous too and still doesn't seem to understand that many children do not want to be suddenly bear hugged and lifted up in the air (she's always been tall and strong for her age so she can do this with most of her peers), especially when they haven't even seen her coming! She can be very kind and empathetic, but she's got a fierce temper when things don't go her way and was always getting into fights with boys. When she was younger she much preferred playing with boys, the rougher the better, and I think it was because chasing each other around the playground and beating the crap out of each other was less demanding than trying to understand the girls and their more sophisticated social interactions. She still tends to approach boys by being aggressive and 'hissing' at them - I think she feels that this will engage them in 'battles'. She also does this weird dolphin yelping noise a lot to try and attract the attention of other children. If she spends a short time with another child and likes them then suddenly they're her 'best friend', and she used to get very upset at school when she couldn't completely monopolise the latest object of her affections. She also got completely obsessed ('in love') in yr3 with a Yr5 boy and followed him around karate attacking him at every opportunity (like kato ).

God I could go on and on. For a variety of reasons, but partly because she seemed so stressed by her social interactions, I took the decision to try home education with her. She was having massive meltdowns every day after school and would be furious, with this long list of the wrongs and injustices committed against her by various other children. We would talk about it and I would try to help her see how her behaviour had contributed to this, but she really can't see it. We've been HE since end of Oct. and she's much happier overall. I watch her at HE socials and she's still the same, but the smaller groups and less pressured environment seem to suit her better. The irony is that she seeks out other children at every opportunity, even though she then becomes angry and frustrated when they won't behave exactly as she wants!

She sounds similar to my Dd3 in some ways non,

She has a group of friends but talks at them and gets cross with them if they dont do what she wants them to do.

She has big problems recognising if she has upset someone and usually refuses to apologise even when things are explained to her.

She used to be really unhappy at school and used to meltdown every day after school but we were lucky enough to be able to move her to another local school which is fantastic.

At her old school they wouldn't even put her on the SN register, now not only is she on the register but she is in lots of groups to help with her social skills and anxiety and they have set up a support network for her for when she gets stressed.

It took us a long time to get Dd3 diagnosed but it was definitely worth it. It is great for me especially to be able to say "Yep, we made a mess of that or OK that didnt work, but you know what it is the ASD that stopped it from working not Dd3 just being a pain"

If you want to go down the diagnosis route I would recommend going to your GP with a list of everything that your Dd finds difficult and asking for a referral to a developmental paediatrician.

Good luck

Thanks mumslife, I've always thought x-DP (DD's dad) could have aspergers too, but he also has a vivid imagination and makes up great stories. I hope I didn't offend you by suggesting that people with aspergers/ASD can't have imagination - this is purely my own ignorance.

Tough I am just starting to learn about this too!

She does sound similar to your DD Ineed. I don't know whether to try for a diagnosis or not. DD went to an excellent nursery which was also a specialist centre for children with special needs. Soon after she started they told me that they had some concerns and put her in what we called 'special measures' - they had her doing small group work looking at following instructions and social interactions. They told me that they didn't think she had SEN, but that she was very strong willed and didn't seem to feel the need to comply or 'fit in' with other children. The phrase that really stuck with me was "if you've got a class of 30 children and ask them to do something; if 29 of them do it then you can almost guarantee that the 30th will too. DD won't; she'll just carry on doing what she wants to do." That sums her up, really - she's still just the same now.

She didn't really have special friends in YrR-2, just would play with whoever. As I said, this would often take the form of following boys around and goading them to chase her by pretending to be an animal; she does this thing where she hisses and grimaces and assumes a sort of attack stance. God I'm making her sound really odd aren't I. She still does this, along with the assorted animal noises.

The thing is, she's very articulate and sounds much older and more confident than she is. She was a very late talker (if I'd realised at the time quite how delayed then I'd have sought help but I didn't know that many children her age). She had 2 or 3 words when I met my DP and she was 2yrs 3 months then. She wasn't really speaking in complete sentences at 3. Yet she started nursery at 3.8 and didn't stop talking from then on. Her infant school put her on the G&T list for 'linguistic intelligence' although her junior school didn't continue that. Her vocabulary amazes me sometimes and her use of words is really eccentric inventive. She sounds very mature but underneath it she's really not, bless her, and I think people expect more of her because she's so tall and loud and articulate. She just hasn't got the social skills and understanding to underpin it.

The recent incident that brought it to the fore again was that my parents took her to a jubilee barn dance in their village. The children were all doing a barn dance where you had to have a partner. DD went around asking all the children (none of whom she knew) to dance with her. When they wouldn't, she refused to listen to my DM's explanation that you can only do it with a partner, went and stood in the middle and started dancing on her own. She didn't know the movements so she started sort of freestyling. My Dparents didn't know whether to or cringe for her! DM made my DstepF go and dance with her to stop the embarrassment, but DD refused to dance with him and got really angry! She had no awareness at all of the inappropriateness of her behaviour.

When I talked to her on the phone the next day she told me that she didn't really like barn dancing because it's boring and 'I like to do my own thing Mummy' - this must be the most uttered phrase in our household.

Sorry I've really wittered on. I don't know whether there's anything to be gained from pursuing a diagnosis. It might help me understand her a bit better, maybe?

Thanks Hothead I will look at that.

She's very obsessive too, even as a pre-verbal toddler she was obsessed with one particular thomas engine. Butterflies came next, she could point correctly at whichever butterfly you said, even though she couldn't say all the names. Car badges next, learning all the makes of car. And so on...

She's a fast and skilled reader and will read books cover to cover in hours for a small book/days for a large one. She loves to read fiction but it has to be fantasy adventure and she'll read the same books over and over. She's unwilling to try different genres.

She is often resistant to trying new ideas or activities. If I force her to do it then she usually enjoys them but god what a drama to get her to do it. She can get very excited about an idea but then gets angry and disappointed when it isn't how she imagined it was going to be. She drives me to distraction with HE asking 'how long are we going to do this for? how much longer do I have to do this for?'

In fact, she drives me to distraction asking questions all the time! Questions and arguing/debating every single thing! If I tell her why I do/don't want her to do something, she focuses on and argues with every little detail of what I've told her and has difficulty seeing that it's the sum of the parts that made me make that decision.

Sorry it's all just tumbling out now, all the things that have rung alarm bells over the years. I know that some of this stuff is quite typical of aspergers/HFA; it's certainly something we've thought of over the years, but I never really put 2 and 2 together.

DD is friends with sisters who live in our road and one of them has atypical ASD. They're all in and out of each others houses all the time so their mum knows DD well. I've mentioned before that I've often thought DD could be on the spectrum and this evening I went round and asked her seriously what she thinks. She thinks yes it's entirely possible and has often noticed how DD doesn't pick up on direct orders hints and social cues. Her ASD DD doesn't really play imaginatively, although she will join in imaginative games with others if she's steered and guided (which fits particularly well with DD's autocratic style! ).

The thing which is significant is her inability to cooperate with her peers to create scenarios jointly. Children should be able to work together to play imaginary games.

My DD2 is very like yours in that she can only play them her way. She can't see any merit in another person's thoughts or ideas and she can't understand their need to participate in order to derive pleasure from the game. This is how her problem with social imagination becomes apparent.

Lots of professionals will dismiss a parent with concerns about ASD because the child plays imaginatively. They don't understand that the nature of the imaginative play is important. Children with ASD often struggle to engage in cooperative or joint imaginative play.

Tough it is heart breaking, isn't it, when you see them trying to make/sustain friendships and floundering. DD did seem to have an easier time socially in Yr3, I think because she was no longer the biggest and loudest in the school as she was in infants (and she'd changed schools half way through infants too), and now she's left a lot of her old classmates greet her like a celebrity when they see her - usually the girls, strangely enough. But there was still so much stress and conflict around it all. That's really interesting that your DD also does the hissing thing. What do you think that is about? DD does it to express displeasure at home as well, like a very angry cat. She does this unconscious tooth grinding thing too, which drives me fucking nuts as I'm hypersensitive to high pitched sounds (DD is not the only odd one in this family ).

Thanks Timandra that explains it a bit more for me. I'll try playing with her tomorrow and see how much she'll cooperate with me in that way. Any other pointers on what to look for would be gratefully received.

If many professionals are likely to dismiss the possibility of DD being on the spectrum because she appears to play imaginatively (and also that she can be very empathetic and seem so socially confident), is there much to be gained by struggling for a diagnosis. I know from talking to people that it can be a really arduous and frustrating process. I'm not intending to send her back to school any time soon, so would it be worth it?

Hothead Daphne Keen looks great but expensive! We're near London but I'm imagining the fees would be high, no?

Thanks so much everyone for your responses and advice. They are much appreciated.

Tough I could see DD doing something like that! Did it cost you a lot to go down the private route? I bet as your DD gets older she'll have friends. It's just meeting someone she clicks with, isn't it. More difficult if she's quirky but still going to happen I bet.

Thanks for that Tough I'll bear that in mind as an option.

Overall the HE has gone well, I think. It's been a rollercoaster of adjustment, not helped by the fact that I was feeling really low a couple of months ago and really wasn't sure if I could continue. DD was really resistant and reluctant to learn new things and I was exhausted with it. I was hoping to rekindle her joy in learning and discovering things, which seemed to have vanished over the last year or so. I always did have reservations about HE because we have such an intense relationship and I never managed to teach her a damn thing when she was little. it was only when she started nursery that she started making these huge strides. But the older she's got the easier I've found it to communicate with her and teach her things. on a good day it's fantastic; we've been learning about atoms and electrons the last couple of days and that went really well. The thing is overcoming her initial resistance to doing something new, and for me not to take that personally or rise to her provocative behaviour. Now we're both getting to know that even when she doesn't want to try something or settle down to do work, the vast majority of times she'll end up enjoying it and getting a sense of accomplishment. That gives me the determination to push through, and is slowly getting through to her that it's not so bad. It helps that she goes off to her dad's every other weekend and we can be more flexible with how long she stays with him now we're not constrained by the school week. She also goes up to my parents for a week or two quite often, which gives me a break to recharge and miss her a bit! If I don't get regular breaks from her then we drive each other (and DP) up the wall.

I've always thought that DD would really struggle at secondary school, so I'm contemplating HE all the way through. I do worry about the socialisation aspect of having to get on with people at school and whether she's missing that being HE. But then I think that school can be hell on earth for kids who don't 'get' the social rules, and I wonder whether making them stay a part of that helps them understand the rules better or just makes them very unhappy?

A diagnosis usually really helps you to get support in school but not a whole lot more. I know that, at the moment, that isn't relevant to you.

The only thing I would say is that is takes a very long time. My DD1 started refusing school when she started high school. She was quickly completely out of school and referred to CAMHS. It then took a whole year of assessments and meetings to get her a diagnosis and a further six months to get her a finalised statement naming a mainstream unit in the same school.

Eighteen months is a long time to wait if for some reasons it becomes appropriate for your DD to re-enter the school system. If you already have a diagnosis the process would probably be considerably shorter.

In terms of looking for evidence for a diagnosis I would look for evidence of all of the triad of impairments. When my DDs were diagnosed the triad was the criteria they had to meet. They didn't really even consider traits which don't come under it, although this will change next year with the new diagnostic criteria.

There is a lovely forum for parents of children who have or may have ASD here. It is very sensible and supportive and the people who post have a wealth of experience they would be willing to share with you. I highly recommended a look at the 'You know there's Autism in the family when...' thread. It made me feel like I had come home! I have learned a phenomenal amount from the forum and they have been a valuable support when things were very difficult.

I know I am back tracking abit non but I just wanted to say the my Dd3 is also very tall and looks older that she is.

Most people forget that she is only 9 and still believes in the tooth fairy and FC.

Despite this she actually doesnt realise that she is not an adult, she makes no definition between talking to a child or an adult.

She finds it very difficult to follow the other girls conversations often they talk to fast and flit from subject to subject. Adults are more predicatable than children too. There is one girl who often throws her arms around Dd3 and it makes her really uncomfortable, she doesnt really do hugging.

She also comes up with inventive solutions not not doing things like toughs Dd, she was supposed to practise a breathing exercise designed to help with anxiety, it involved breathing in though her nose and blowing bubbles into a milkshake as she breathed out. She really couldn't get the hand of it [she has coordination issues] so she dribbled milkshake all over the task sheet and said "there they will think I have done it now!!"

She is very funny and very lovely but also extremely hard work at times and regularly growls at us when she is cross with us. She is rapidly heading towards secondary so we have to decide what is the best way forward for her.

I would love to HE her for secondary but sadly it is really not an option for us.

If you could find the money for a private DX things would move much quicker and at least you would know one way or the other. Dd3's DX has really helped me to understand her. Her lovely SENCO is in the process of working through a programme with her at school to begin the process of explaing her DX to her as she is asking a lot of questions relating to appointments and social skills groups now.

Another book that is worth a read is "Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome" by Luke Jackson he wrote it when he was 14 so it is from a teens point of view.

Am rambling now and avoiding doing housework so will go and get on with it

Thanks both for the valuable advice. Timandra I'll check out that forum. Ineed she sounds very similar to your DD!

I am a bit confused now... I sat down and played with DD today, with her animals, and she played an imaginative game beautifully and cooperatively! We played a vet game with her animals, and although she was very keen to direct me, when I wouldn't be directed she was perfectly happy to play alongside and with me. I really focused on ensuring that it was cooperative, imaginative play and as far as I can tell, it was. She loved it and didn't want to stop playing; I know I'm going to be fending off incessant requests to play with her now, as she keeps saying 'I wish we hadn't had to stop playing I was having a really good time'.

God I don't know whether I've been making a mountain out of a molehill or what to think. Is it possible to have Aspergers and still be able to play cooperatively like that?

Ds' diagnosis is aspergers traits not disorder. He has a marvellous imagination, plays beautifully with other kids, has normal eye contact and normal speech into nations. His aspergers comes out in the need to control, for routine and in general emotional immaturity ( so cries much more readily than most 6 yr old boys). Perhaps your dd has traits too?

Bloody iPad - intonations not into nations!